Sleight of hand and twist of fate
by ToTeaOrNotToTea
Summary: Elizabeth 'Ellie' Bennet goes to sleep in 2016 the younger daughter of a long divorced couple, known best for her specialisation in counselling juvenile e wakes up as Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Bennet, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a genteel couple in Hertfordshire, the second of five daughters, her father's favourite, and a lady most accomplished for her wit and laughter
1. Chapter 1

Elizabeth 'Ellie' Bennet goes to sleep in 2017 a twenty-eight-year-old psychiatrist, the youngest daughter of a long divorced couple, known best for her specialisation in counselling juvenile delinquents. She goes to sleep thinking of the last time she had talked to her mother, ten years ago when the former Mrs Bennet had berated her for being a prude and not sleeping with her then boyfriend who had pushed her head into a table when she didn't 'put out'.

She wakes up as Elizabeth 'Lizzie' Bennet, but in the Regency era, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Mr and Mrs Bennet, a genteel couple in Hertfordshire, the second of five daughters, her father's favourite, and a lady most accomplished for her wit and laughter.

Suffice it to say that Fate took a violent turn

She doesn't deal with it very well in the beginning. She cries, she yells, she break things. She rages and when she finds no answer as to how it happened, she isolates herself, claiming the depths of the room she shares with Jane as her sanctuary.

And the Bennets, well, Mrs Bennet in particular, make her excuses. They tell their neighbours of the ghastly tumble little Elizabeth took, always running off into the country with no thought to her poor mother's nerves! Such a wild child and of course her silly little walks have their consequences.

And Elizabeth Bennet says nothing about it at all. Her father worries about her, her sister cries for the lack of the wit that usually makes her day and Charlotte Lucas wonders why her best friend refuses to see her. Refusing to see everyone else made sense but to not see her? Doesn't she know that Charlotte wouldn't judge, no matter what?

Elizabeth Bennet wallows.

Until one day she doesn't.

* * *

It happens by coincidence. Elizabeth doesn't like taking meals with her 'family' anymore and makes her way to kitchen often to fill up so she may excuse herself from the fine table her mother sets as soon as possible.

And she overhears a conversation that breaks her heart.

The cad taking up residence in Meryton inn had very nearly compromised one of their maids. The poor girl was terrified of returning to that place for her other jobs but had no choice, not with her ill mother to support. And she had nowhere else to go, no one else she could talk to but kind Mrs Hill who was the very soul of discretion, this much she knew.

(Mrs Hill, who had seen too many reputations fall prey to Mrs Bennet's tongue and refused to follow her mistress' example.)

And Liz thinks back to a time when she had been saved from something like that through sheer luck. Not through her own efforts, but luck.

And how it had haunted her even though it had been stopped before it could happen. She remembers how weak it made her feel, how many nights she didn't sleep for fear of nightmares.

How could she possibly let the same happen to this girl, then?

"The world is not kind to us women," She says to the bewildered maid, Shirley, that she had asked to talk to. They were in the stables, where neither horses nor grooms were to be found, they had been lent out for Mr Bennet's reluctant rounds to visit his tenants.

"Begging your pardon ma'am but you're a lady and I am only a servant." The girl says softly.

"Being a lady wouldn't stop some man from compromising me." Elizabeth sneers. "And it wouldn't change the ruination of my reputation, or that even at its best all I could do is end up married to my attacker."

"Miss Bennet?" Shirley says when Elizabeth is lost in thought and she is jerked away from bad memories.

"You shouldn't feel unsafe, you shouldn't feel afraid to sleep." Shirley blushes as Elizabeth's eyes rove over the circles under her eyes. "So I'm going to teach you to fight. Now then," She shifted into the position her instructor had taught her when she'd gone to her first ever self-defence class. "If he makes a pass at you from the front, you go like this."

Two hours later, a much more lively Elizabeth Bennet joins her family for dinner willingly for the first time in weeks. She smiles a bit easier now, her answers regaining the sharpness she was known for. Jane rejoices in her sister's return, Lydia and Kitty grumble when that sparkling with turns to them and Mary is glad that she isn't forced to take part in conversations as Elizabeth's replacement.

Mrs Bennet twists her mouth, unhappy. A delicate, shy lady would find it much easier to find suitors than a charming and droll one.

* * *

Four days later when shopping for ribbons in Meryton, the Bennet girls come across a subdued looking man with a black eye. He flinches and pulls his hand in front of his groin in a defensive position when he catches sight of Shirley trailing behind Elizabeth with a gleam in her eye.

Three weeks later, most of the serving girls in Hertfordshire have been taught of ways to defend themselves by Shirley and sleep a little safer at nights. Elizabeth does eventually figure out why all the girls in Meryton seem to curtsy deeper when greeting her than anyone else, but it is a good few days before it strikes her.

At which point she moves on to teach a few of the more advanced manoeuvres to Shirley, with tips on how to teach it to others.

Suffice it to say, that any bad rumours of the second Bennet daughter were viciously suppressed below stairs.

* * *

Elizabeth Bennet, Lydia, Kitty and Mary's elder sister, had quite despaired of the lot as being difficult, wilful, and improper and in Mary's case, a bore.

Elizabeth Bennet, the psychiatrist, saw different things. She saw a lack of discipline in the younger lot combined with a thorough inferiority complex as beautiful Jane and charming Elizabeth's unremarkable sisters. And Mary, the bore was the shy middle child who turned to the scriptures for consolation, not her mother's favourite with her lack of enthusiasm and not her father's either for he had no hopes of any daughter of his that he could be quite as fond of as Elizabeth.

She also saw something else. They were incredibly lucky to have her there.

Left to their own instruments these children would have been ruined. Mr Bennet was lovely as Elizabeth and Jane's papa but Lydia, Kitty and Mary had a very different father. If Mrs Bennet continued to compare them to Jane and find them lacking they would turn to horrid ways to distinguish themselves.

Charity, after all, begins at home. And that was where she started.

* * *

It began small. Where Lydia went, Katherine followed. So, that was where she began.

It took baby steps. Complaining about being out in society when Lydia could hear. Talk about how it would lessen her worth to have everyone see her all the time. There would be no grandness, no _quelle surprise_ if everyone _always_ saw her.

And Lydia eventually stopped begging to debut.

When news of the militia arrived and the request began again Elizabeth handled it as well.

"Such a mixed bag though, why almost every day you hear of soldiers abandoning the army and shaming their families forever. And even when they don't such horrid rumours follow them about, of children being born bearing a resemblance to soldiers rather than their fathers and worse!"

Luckily, Mr Bennet was around when this happened and for a moment took interest in schooling his younger girls in the behaviour of young soldiers. La, some had manners and many had honour and bravery, of course, but it was not always good. He bid his children to be cautious and told a tale of a vicious lad he once knew who rose up the ranks in the militia only to be eventually brought to court martial and then hung for reasons that were so vile that he would not dare repeat them.

And then, there was Mary. Mary who came out of her shell once her sister Elizabeth began begging her to turn the little tunes stuck into her head into notes to be played on the pianoforte. She hummed and hummed and Mary, who wanted the attention desperately although she did not know how to go about asking for it, came out of her shell slowly.

Then came Jane, ever so steady, ever so serene finally cried over her suitors and their desertions over her dowry and began to smile properly instead of the polite ones she was used to bestowing in society.

Mrs Bennet, Elizabeth thought, was to be handled much the same way that Lydia was. Drop a few hints of her brash gossiping putting off suitors and she would learn she thought.

She did not.

Fanny Bennet was still the same shrill, loud woman intent on airing her dirty laundry in public.

Therefore, she took a different approach to her. Now, Mrs Bennet's loud mouth was dealt with differently.

Elizabeth clapped her hand over her ears, "Dear me, mother, is there something wrong with your hearing?!"

The concern was fake but Mrs Bennet was convinced of its sincerity. Especially once sweet, kind Jane joined in, just as planned.

"Mama, are you quite sure you haven't taken ill? You seem to be talking ever so loudly!" Jane said, and Lydia and Kitty tittered but joined in, wanting to be in on the joke.

"Yes, yes, are you alright?" they chorused and Fanny Bennet clutched a hand to her throat, confounded.

"Well, perhaps I have been-"

"Mama, please stop yelling!" Elizabeth said, and chastised and confused, Mrs Bennet pouted. "Why our farthest tenant might be able to hear you!"

The whisper that next came out of Mrs Bennet's voice had Mr Bennet shaking in relief. He hadn't heard the woman that soft spoken in decades. "Well, perhaps there is something wrong with my ears, perhaps we should send for the apothecary?" She said, sotto voce but still alarmed.

(After all, if something was wrong with her hearing then it would severely limit her ability to eavesdrop.)

Just their wonderful luck then, that the apothecary was one of many that had felt the loud barb of Mrs Bennet's sharp tongue pierce his own hide a few too many times to be magnanimous. Especially when prompted to go along with it by the woman's husband himself.

"I am afraid there is no remedy for your affliction Mrs Bennet. The best thing to do would be to conserve your voice and keep from flying into fits of nerves."

Elizabeth chimed in eager to get the last little problem in their house fixed. "Ah, yes, I have heard it many a time that too much excitement can cause blood to flow into the ears, damaging them, even causing people to hear noises when there are none."

She was talking of stress induced tinnitus of course, and it was real enough that the apothecary had did not feel at all as if he was lying.

"You must not indulge in too much excitement Mrs Bennet," He said sternly and Mrs Bennet could only wail quietly and pout.

And so peace returned to Longbourn at long last

* * *

Hertfordshire was changed. Oh, in many ways it was still the same, certainly the relatives who visited once a year would notice no difference. But the residents knew how it had all changed and they lay it at the feet of one child.

Elizabeth Bennet had always been a favoured confidante. Unlike her mother she was no gossip, unlike her elder sister, she did not appeal to people's better natures, unlike Mary she did not chide and scold, unlike her father she did not merely pretend to listen.

Her wit meant that people always wanted to tell her things, if only to hear that sharp tongue fly in private. Her prejudice was annoying, yes, but she was just good natured enough that enough good deed would take it away.

She was safe.

And she was still safe. People still told her secrets. But now with the sharp barbs came a calm advisor as well. They could amuse themselves well over what she said, titter and giggle about it but her barbs now held weight. They weren't mere witticisms.

They were something to consider seriously.

It started quietly enough. Charlotte confessed her fears of being a spinster forever, passed over for her plainness and found laughter in dear Lizzie's grievances of Jane's beauty intimidating men, of her own impertinence turning them off, of poor Mary King being hunted for her new settlement and consoled her friend with these little things. After all, there was always some reason, some fault that people would find, that was just what people did.

And the happy thought reiterated by Elizabeth's words had Charlotte content. She did not now seek out suitors. She did not sit like a wallflower intent on disappearing because she felt forgotten.

No, when she wasn't asked for dances she still laughed and smiled. She rebuked her mother's disparaging comments with an honest smile and Mrs Lucas quite stopped dropping them.

And it was noticed. Charlotte was soon engaged and married to one of the lawyers who had come over on behalf of a gentleman looking at Netherfield Park. They were married in spring a month after Elizabeth turned twenty.

Hertfordshire was changed. And at long last Fate deemed them ready. So it was that one fine day Mrs Bennet turned to her husband and whispered, softly but determinedly, "My dear Mr Bennet, have you heard that Netherfield park is let at last?"


	2. Chapter 2

"Fancy!" A bouncy Miss Lydia Bennet claimed, repeating the news for the third time to her elder sisters. Jane had nodded the first time and then returned to her needlework, Elizabeth had smiled obligingly and returned to her book and Kitty had hung off her every word. She had been listening at the top of the stairs, the news that Netherfield park was let exciting her mother so much that Mr Bennet had to remind his wife many times of the physician's advice lest she had her vapours again. Then Mary had joined them, in the tiny room that Jane and Elizabeth shared that had become their own little gentlewoman's club, and Lydia had repeated herself. Now, finally at her third iteration, Elizabeth put her book away and paid her youngest sister some mind, "A group of gentlemen are coming to Netherfield park!"

"A group of gentlemen you say?" Elizabeth said questioningly and Lydia all but vibrated in her excitement.

"Mama said that a Mr Bingley of four or five thousand pounds a year had taken Netherfield and he must be looking for a wife,"

Elizabeth tutted, "Mama always thinks that men are looking for a wife, you know what _she_ says,"

And as one, all the Bennet daughters recited, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

"Pity we know so few single men in possession of a fortune." Lydia tittered and Kitty followed.

"Fortunes don't hold as much countenance in a marriage as you would believe," Elizabeth said sternly and suddenly all her sisters' eyes turned to her aware that she was going off into one of her deep and thoughtful modes. She always gave good advice then. "Marriage requires you marry a friend or a stranger, you will soon share your life with someone else, share your home with someone else. Things that were the norm will have to be explained, little habits that you never noticed you had become missish whimsies. You will change yourself to fit this new life better. So when you do marry someone make sure it is someone you _want_ to compromise with. Make sure it is someone you would willingly change for. Anything less and you will be unable to sleep at night, won't recognise yourself in the mirror. It is better to reject a proposal and feel sorry for a while then say yes in a fit of pique and regret it for the rest of your life. A fortune cannot be much help in that."

An almost glum atmosphere took over as all the sisters save for Mary lost their smiles.

"Unless it's a _really large_ fortune," Lydia said and giggles flew all over, "A large enough fortune for ribbons and lace and jewels enough that might let you laugh at the the ton."

Elizabeth wagged a finger at her youngest sister but laughed nonetheless.

On the inside she went into silent paroxysms at the thought of what it might have been like if Lydia and Kitty had actually been out in society like their mother had wanted and consequently attended all the assemblies and gatherings that were bound to be held to welcome and throw their daughters at this rich and single Mr Bingley.

* * *

Mr Bingley was charming, genial and almost unbearably happy go lucky. When Jane caught his eye Elizabeth was glad of it. They might actually be a good match. While Jane would match anyone well, being very easy going and kind, she suited Bingley as her calm and serenity might temper his exuberance.

His friend on the other hand...

The Darcy man was looking around the room with a snobbish look on his face. When she was younger she might have been very annoyed by that, if a boy at a party was standing in the corner sneering at people who were trying to get his attention. She shuddered to think how the original Elizabeth Bennet would react to it as well.

Luckily, she was a grown up on the inside and recognised what he was exhibiting as social anxiety. And even though the remarks he made that she overheard, about her not being 'handsome enough to tempt' him were rude, that didn't mean they weren't valid concerns. Physical attraction was an important part of relationships, the ones that had a sexual component at least. One person's gorgeous was another's pigface. She would admit to herself that she was disappointed, mainly because Darcy himself was very much her type.

(There were far too many blonds in Hertfordshire and Ellie was always partial to brunette herself)

He was not enjoying himself at all, and to be fair she couldn't blame him not with all the matchmaking mamas around, like wolves circling prey.

Poor kid.

Although he wasn't a kid was he? He was her mental age, although she was in the body of a spring chicken at twenty going on twenty one. And to be perfectly honest, he was quite rude, probably thought he could afford to be since the opinions of the country people in a little place like Hertfordshire didn't matter.

His roving eyes met hers as he glared out into the crowd, shifting uncomfortably. She was struck by a sudden whimsy and winked quickly before turning back to Charlotte who was sitting next to him with a smile.

Consequently she remained ignorant of the fact that on the other side of the room, Fitzwilliam Darcy had choked on his own spittle and had to be thumped furiously by his good friend Bingley who was just making a turn nearby in his dance.

* * *

Another day, another fete. Or was it a ball? Or a gathering? Or an assembly?

It was one of the things Elizabeth had yet to fully understand, the distinguishing factors between them all, if at all there were any. But they vexed her a great deal, mostly because of all the dancing.

Apparently the original Lizzie had been a wonderful dance partner, quite in demand in fact, due to her pretty manners and sharp conversation.

The new one did not. It had taken many a night re-learning how to dance with Lydia, the only one tall enough to be an appropriate partner for her, but even at her best she still counted her steps carefully. She often needed Mary or Jane or her mother, whoever was free, to make gestures so as to tell her where to go and who was to be her temporary partner during the turns and twists and the switching, which they insisted wasn't really switching partners. How could it not be switching partners when she literally had to let go of the hand of the original partner and spend half her time making turns around another person or another person's partner, she didn't quite know.

So when Mr Lucas spotted her while he was talking to Mr Darcy and made a great show of presenting her as a partner with a quick little, "My dear Miss Eliza, why are you not dancing? Mr. Darcy, you must allow me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner. You cannot refuse to dance, I am sure when so much beauty is before you." And then all but shoved her hand at Darcy before the younger man could escape, she panicked. Mary was playing on the pianoforte, Mrs Bennet was nowhere to be seen and Jane was busy dancing with Bingley.

"Indeed, sir, I have not the least intention of dancing. I entreat you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner." Elizabeth had been taught how to politely tell people 'Don't make me dance, please, please, _please_ don't make me dance' by Jane after the third week of her stepping on Lydia's toes.

Mr Darcy and Sir Lucas tried, oh they tried hard.

But Lizzie remained adamant.

* * *

And in another corner of the hall, a lonely Mr Darcy was beset upon by Miss Bingley.

"I can guess the subject of your reverie."

"I should imagine not."

"You are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many evenings in this manner—in such society; and indeed I am quite of your opinion. I was never more annoyed! The insipidity, and yet the noise—the nothingness, and yet the self-importance of all those people! What would I give to hear your strictures on them!"

"Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow."

Something almost mournful entered Mr Darcy's eyes and Miss Bingley looked at him in askance. As was his wont, he made no reply to her unasked but obvious question and she was forced to voice it out loud, curious as she was as to who could have possibly caught his eye. Who in this backwaters was possibly so enticing that might gain the attention of Mr Darcy who had been unaffected, even unimpressed, through the many years of having the ton's great Beauties thrown at him.

"Miss Elizabeth Bennet." Darcy said if only to shut Bingley's sister up. He was certain that the shock should have the woman curb her tongue and earn him a few moments of silence. He was wrong.

Miss Elizabeth Bennet!" repeated Miss Bingley. "I am all astonishment. How long has she been such a favourite?—and pray, when am I to wish you joy?"

"That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment. I knew you would be wishing me joy."

"Nay, if you are serious about it, I shall consider the matter is absolutely settled. You will be having a charming mother-in-law, indeed; and, of course, she will always be at Pemberley with you."

He listened to her go on and on with half an ear, still contemplating a fine pair of eyes.

And wondering what their owner could mean by _winking at him_ at the Meryton Assembly!


End file.
